


Drink the Whole Moon

by kali_asleep



Series: Feeling the Days [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Mild Sexual Content, Near-Canon AU, Near-canon, Pre-Season 1, Underage Drinking, just pidge tho, pre-kerberos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 19:52:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali_asleep/pseuds/kali_asleep
Summary: Shiro should be thrilled: he's been chosen to pilot the mission to Kerberos, a prestigious honor for anyone at the Garrison. And he should be enjoying the celebratory trip out to the desert with Keith, Katie, and Matt. But there's a feeling he just can't shake, a feeling that, despite Katie's best assurances, something about the mission will go wrong.





	Drink the Whole Moon

**Author's Note:**

> A little near-canon au for you all. Katie and Keith here are 18-19, Matt and Shiro are 22-23. Enjoy!
> 
>  _Heavily_ inspired by ["14 Faces"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o-MRBm64hg) by Lewis Del Mar. Listen to it. Listen to it on loop.

It’s Matt’s idea of course and, objectively, it’s a terrible one. Trouble is Shiro’s lot in life, though, and has been since the moment he met the Holt siblings over six years ago. 

“Guys, no, I’m being dead serious, the report said you’d be able to see the old SpaceX satellite at peak orbit over the desert right around now!” Katie shouts. Shiro can barely hear her over the rush of air coming through the open window. 

“Get in the car, Katie!” he shouts back.

Given she’s half-hanging out of the car window as he drives a good ten miles over the posted speed limit, Katie’s not really in much of a position to slide down and pout at him. But she does flail her legs a bit, pout implied. He ducks out of the way of a wiggling hiking boot and catches her foot by the ankle with the hand _not_ dedicated to making sure they don’t careen off the road. He runs his thumb along the skin just above her low sock. 

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Shiro!” Her voice warbles, though if it’s from the wind that whips around her or the beers Matt’s been feeding her since they crossed the city limits, he can’t be sure. 

“So’s dying,” Keith calls from the back. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Shiro captures a glimpse of a rare grin crossing Keith’s serious face. If he can be stuck in the back seat with _Matt_ and still be smiling, then perhaps it’s not all a wash. 

Katie’s hand slips in through the window, middle finger strong and high in Keith’s direction. 

“I’m fine if Shiro’s driving,” she says. “Unlike _someone_ , he sticks close to the speed limit.”

Keith throws up his hands. “If you want to get somewhere faster, you have to go fast!” he says by way of argument. 

“I’m adding that to our list of Keith-isms,” Matt says from over the rim of his beer can. 

He finishes his drink with a hard chug, crushes it in his fist for extra drama, and begins rolling down his window.

“Matt, don’t encourage her,” Shiro groans.

But it’s too late: Matt undoes his seatbelt and hauls himself out the back passenger window. He can hear Pidge’s cheer, and tightens his grip around her ankle when she leans, most likely to try and reach her brother with a high five. 

“They’re encouragable,” Keith mutters.

Snippets of the Holts’ conversation flutter through the windows. _Look, it’s up there!_ and _Don’t see it… Katie, you’ve gotta account for parallax when you-_ and _If you weren’t so blind-_. Shiro rolls his eyes. 

“You mean incorrigible?”

Keith’s eyes meet his in the mirror’s reflection. He’s still grinning. Incredible.

“Is there really a difference?” he returns.

With the Holts occupied, an amicable semi-silence falls between him and Keith, as was often their way. Keith stares out the window, doing his best to ignore the shenanigans on the other side. Shiro strokes absently at the side of Katie’s ankle and watches the road unfold through the dusty windshield. The further out into the desert they get, the more the road seems less like a rule and closer to a suggestion. Vast and red-gold in the lowering sun, the desert begs him to deviate from the road’s straightness, from the path set before him. It’s a flash of insight into why Keith loves it so much, and why Matt had insisted that they celebrate out there rather than in town. 

For not the first time since they got the news, Shiro finds it difficult to swallow. 

“Are you excited?” Keith asks. It’s a question Shiro’s been asked a dozen times in the past 24-hours, but it sounds different coming from Keith’s mouth. Wary, like Keith knows the real answer whether Shiro gives it or not. He’s been like that for as long as Shiro’s known him. Perceptive, the way a blade perceives the cut a moment before making it. 

Shiro opts for a level, “Full of anticipation. It’s an incredible opportunity. It’d be foolish to pass it up.” A not-lie.

“I bet there are a lot of jealous Garrison pilots who’d love for you to be foolish for once,” Keith says with a snort. Shiro sees him cross his arms over his chest and glance to the side.

“And by the time we’re back, you’ll have graduated, and there will be a whole new class of Garrison pilots to be jealous when you get picked to pilot the next mission.”

This time, it’s a shy smile that touches Keith’s lips. Shiro doesn’t feel an ounce of remorse for diverting Keith’s questioning. Two years of mentoring have given Shiro a unique view of the range of Keith’s emotions: ambitious, persistent, fiery, stubborn, quick, uncertain, serious. Happy was an uncommon one, one that Shiro would embrace and nourish as much as he could, regardless of how he himself was feeling. 

They chat about Keith’s year, his classmates and classes, his application for the Space Exploration program. Katie and Keith had ended up in most of the same classes this year, despite the fact that she’d already received her acceptance into the Garrison’s Engineering program. It likely had something to do with how she’d already aced her way through the Garrison’s pre-Engineering track, and was now taking Comms and Flight classes for fun. 

“Don’t let Katie hear me say this,” Keith confides, leaning up to the driver’s seat, “but I’d feel way better starting the program if I knew she was going to be on my crew. At least I’d know I was getting one competent person to work with.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Shiro says. “The Garrison trains all of the classes the same-”

“That’s what I’m afraid of-”

“ _And_ ,” Shiro continues, “Space Exploration is the most difficult program to get into. They don’t let just anyone in.”

Keith shifts back and crosses his arms, doubt twisting his features. “You think that, Shiro, but there’s this guy in one of my classes, Lance, and he-”

Whatever Keith is gearing up to complain about, it’s cut off when Katie and Matt slide back through the windows in unison. Katie flops into her seat, one foot sliding into Shiro’s lap as he maintains a hold on the other. Matt’s descent is just as graceless, accompanied by a grunt and the metallic clank of empty beer cans. 

“Hey. Can I have this back?” Katie asks, pointing to the ankle Shiro’s fingers still circle. 

She looks an absolute mess, and Shiro just about loses the ability to safely operate a motor vehicle. The wind must have torn her hair tie out for the way her brown mane frizzes and tangles around her face. Light catches in her hair and shoots it with gold, halo-like, and heightens the wind-chapped red of her cheeks. One strap of her tank top has slipped a few inches, revealing a strip of white lined by sun-pinked skin. The crooked smile she shoots him is an invitation to lean in close and see if freckles have come to dust her bare collarbone. He keeps one hand on the wheel: a massive endeavor.

“Nope, I found this one, so I get to keep it,” he says, tugging her other foot into his lap. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but doesn’t pull away.

A moment later, the crack and fizz of a can being opened fills the car.

“No better way to celebrate the successful spotting of an ancient satellite than with a can of Milwaukee's Finest,” Matt says. 

Matt offers one to Keith, who waves him off and plucks a stick of beef jerky from Matt’s bag instead. So, Matt turns to Katie, who gladly accepts. She leans back against the passenger door and watches Shiro as she drinks. Sprawled out, eyes gazing up at him through her lashes, the look is almost enough to vanish the clot that’s been building in his gut and replace it with something much, much more pleasant. He releases her ankle and trails his hand up her leg, making it mid-calf before his reach ends. That grin of hers sharpens.

Matt reaches up and hits Shiro’s arm with a lazy karate chop. 

“Eyes on the road there, Captain Shirogane,” he says in mock command. “Any detours with Kit-Kat are going to have to wait until _after_ we’ve reached our final destination.”

Katie unleashes the power of her middle finger once more, but is too occupied with a large swig of her beer to otherwise respond. 

“You’re not my commanding officer,” Shiro grumbles. Keeping his hand on Katie’s leg, he turns his attention back to the road. “Speaking of our destination,” he continues, “how much further out are we, Keith?”

“‘Bout an hour if you keep driving like a grandma,” Keith says around a mouthful of jerky. Matt _and_ Katie both go in to high-five Keith. 

“I’m going ten over the speed limit!” Shiro protests. “Do you want to get pulled over?”

Katie snickers and runs her heel gently along his thigh. “A few problems with that defense, Captain.” She raises a hand and starts counting off. “One: We’re out in the middle of the desert. There aren’t any cops out here. Two: If there were any cops out here, I think they’d be a little more preoccupied with all the open containers.”

“And the fact that me and Katie are under the legal drinking age,” Keith chimes in.

“Thank you, Keith,” Katie says with a nod. “Three: You and Matt are two of the most famous people in the country right now. Actual hero status. You two could have a dead cadet in the trunk and the police wouldn’t bat an eye. Would probably ask for your autograph. And barring all else, I could just flash my tits.”

“Eww, gross,” Matt crows from the back. “I’d rather just go to jail.”

In an impressive display of coordination, Katie tips her beer back to her mouth while shooting Matt the bird with both fingers. Matt makes mock choking noises, clutches his chest, and slumps across the backseat, head landing in Keith’s lap. 

“Can we put him in the trunk?” Keith asks, dangling a piece of jerky over Matt’s face. 

Matt pops back up and shoots him an affronted scowl. “And here I was about to propose you take over driving duties!” he says. 

Groaning, Shiro shakes his head. “I’m driving, Matt. When you two blackmailed me into asking Commander Holt if we could borrow the car, it was under the condition that I be the responsible adult driver.”

“I’m a responsible adult!” Katie protests. The rest of the car snorts as one. Rolling her eyes, she continues. “Besides, all Dad said was that _a_ responsible adult be driving. He didn’t specify that said responsible adult had to be you.”

“Katie’s got a point,” Matt says. “Keith is both over the age of eighteen - _id est_ , an adult-”

Katie twists in her seat to look back at Keith and hisses, “ _He’s breaking out the Latin, you’ve got a chance._ ”

It’s worth relinquishing Katie’s leg to rub at his temple. Shiro lets out the deepest sigh, filled with as much disappointment as he can muster, but Matt chatters on.

“-and when Keith enlisted with the Garrison,” Matt continues, “he signed a legally binding contract saying that he would uphold planetary and interplanetary law and rise to every challenge issued to him. He also committed to having to make his bed twice daily and wash his uniforms weekly. In my book, it doesn’t get more responsible than that. _Quod erat demonstandum_ -” He pauses for dramatic effect, and takes a long chug of his beer. “Keith can drive the car.”

“Nope,” is all Shiro says in response.

“Matt raises a good argument,” Katie says, parroting her brother. “Very logical. Very solid.” There’s a crooning edge to her voice that only came out after a few drinks, but she manages to keep her words in order. “Besides, you’re going to be driving a spaceship for two years, you deserve a break from driving!”

“We’ll get there twenty minutes faster if you let me drive,” Keith adds. “You can time it.”

Shiro can already feel his hands loosening around the steering wheel, but he’s safe as long as Katie doesn’t notice. He doesn’t really want to be driving; for once, he’d like to not be the one in charge of the calamity he calls his best friends. To think, the top pilot and comm specialist of the Galaxy Garrison’s elite Space Exploration program and two outright prodigies would be such a mess the moment they left their uniforms back in the city. Nonetheless, Commander Holt had given him the keys, and he’d rather jettison himself out of a ship’s garbage chute than have to spend an awkward 23 months in a tight space with the Commander should something happen to the car. 

“Come on, let Keith drive,” Katie pleads.

Still, he holds firm. “It’s not even my car.”

“Well, it’s mine by approximate male lineage,” Matt says, “and I say you let Keith drive.”

Knowing he’s lost one battle, Shiro tries a new tactic. “Do you even know how to drive a car, Keith?” He _had_ never seen Keith behind the wheel of anything that wasn’t flying, figuratively or literally. 

“I’m beyond proficient in driving a number of things,” Keith sniffs, which sounds a lot like a non-answer to Shiro. At the same time, Shiro’s seen Keith out-pilot even him in a jet, and with the way Keith handled that rocket he called a motorcycle, there’s a good chance Keith would be more than just “proficient” at driving the Holt family vehicle. On the other hand, there wasn’t a place Keith went that he didn’t go fast.

“Under the speed limit?”

Conveniently, Keith sticks a rather large chunk of jerky in his mouth the second Shiro asks the question. He makes a show of resolute chewing and looking out the window. He finishes a minute later, swallows, and asks, “Problem is, Shiro, you don’t know the rest of the way to the cabin. Since I do, and since some of the signs can be difficult to catch as it gets darker unless you’re familiar with them, it makes way more sense for me to drive. We could get turned around for hours if we’re not careful.”

“Are you going to keep the directions to yourself unless I agree to let you drive?” Shiro asks.

The new piece of jerky in Keith’s mouth is all the answer Shiro needs. 

With the heaviest, most long-suffering sigh Shiro can muster from his lungs, he decelerates and pulls the car off to the side of the road. Katie lets out an excited whoop and turns fully in her seat to give Keith a double high-five. Matt starts collecting his crushed, empty cans into a plastic bag, which he hauls out with him once the car stops.

“I call dibs on front,” Matt says.

“But I’m already in the front seat!” Katie protests. Still, she opens the passenger door.

“Yeah, right now you are, but you know you’re going to crawl in the back seat the minute Shiro’s there,” Matt teases, “meaning I’m going to be cramped and uncomfortable. Three’s a crowd, Kit-Kat.”

They do their seat shuffle, Keith and Matt taking up the front, Katie and Shiro sliding into the back. Keith starts the car and puts it into gear with a lurch. Shiro leans up and raises an eyebrow at the inauspicious start, but Keith’s eyes remain dead set on the road ahead. A moment later, the car pulls back onto the road in a smooth, albeit speedy, curve. 

Keith holds true to all expectations, going at least twenty five over with zero compunction. The road is long, though, and empty, and the desert surrounding them on all sides so vast that soon the speed seems irrelevant: they could be going 30 or 300 and they’d never reach the end. 

And in a heartbeat, it feels like the emptiness is closing in on him.

The expansive nothingness edges in on the road, narrowing it to a meager strip on the horizon. Somehow, the road persists, though it seems like it will be engulfed in sand at any moment, wiped away from living memory, and them along with it. He swears he sees the long tract of desert creeping in closer until he has to rip his eyes away from the view out the front windshield, but it doesn’t help: the expanse of the wide, unbroken landscape sticks. If he opened the car door now and reached down, would the sand be cold? Frigid, airless, dark?

Suddenly it’s not the desert that occupies his mind’s eye.

Shiro stares down at his clasped hands. They’re shaking. It strikes him that maybe they’d been shaking this entire trip: he’d just kept finding things to hold onto. 

“Shiro?”

One of Katie’s hands slides over his. Her calloused fingers pry open his death grip, and she replaces his right hand with hers. 

“Sorry, did you say something?” he asks. He’s pleased, if not surprised, at how steady his voice comes out. “I zoned out a bit.”

 

“No, you just looked, well, zoned out.” She runs her thumb along the back of his hand in small, soothing circles. Her words are quiet but serious, all traces of the beers she tucked away gone. “You've seemed zoned out all day.”

A frown is as good as an indictment, so Shiro opts for neutral, but his expression doesn’t matter: Katie’s caught on anyway. She stares straight up at him, waiting. 

The time between the two of them spans years. She’d been the sister of his roommate at the Garrison, and then a fellow cadet, and then a friend, and then something more, and in the six years that have brought Katie closer and closer to him, he’s learned one, definitive thing: she had no time or appreciation for regular, societal conventions. Punches didn’t get pulled and aggressive never became passive because with Katie, there was so much to be done and so little time for communication errors. The quality is one of many that drew him to her, but in this moment, Shiro wishes she would stray more to the conventional. Wishes she would not just recognize a subject when he was trying to avoid it, but let him.

But she’s not, and she won’t, and so Shiro is left fumbling in the silence for an answer.

“I’m a bit overwhelmed,” he finally says, “with everything.”

Katie unbuckles her seatbelt and scoots over to sit next to him. As if desiring to show just how responsible he could be as a driver, Keith protests her lack of safety restraint. Katie responds with a petulant, ‘Don’t crash, then,’ and leans against him. As much as he knows he should be backing up Keith’s commands, Katie is close enough now for him to feel the heat of her skin, warmed by the sun. His head dips into the crook of her neck and he takes in the scent of her: sweat and citrus and a woodiness he can’t quite place. 

“The celebration is a bit much,” she says in a voice low enough for only him to hear. Shiro holds back a sigh of relief. She’d only picked up on half of his worries; the other half, he’d rather she continued to miss. 

“But I think Matt was looking for an excuse to get together and let go,” she continues. “As excited as he is, he’s already missing the only things he truly loves in life: the internet and annoying Keith.”

Shiro chuckles into her neck. The race of his heart starts to slow, it's knocking no longer quite so painful against his ribs. 

“Though I don't know why he didn't just want to go out to dinner or something,” she grumbles. “There's no signal out here.”

Relinquishing the safety of her skin, he sits up and watches her tap at her phone screen for a few seconds before letting out a disgusted sigh. “Nothing,” she says. “What am I going to do now? Talk to you?” 

“The horror,” he deadpans. “It's unimaginable.”

The corners of her eyes crinkle as she giggles. Shiro knows it's impossible for eyes to glow, but Katie’s come close, something akin to sunlight trapped in ancient amber. He’s been stuck in them for ages now. 

He slides a hand slowly down her leg, memorizing each sensation: the pucker of a scar from an accident involving mentos and a soldering iron; the soft sweep of hair; the curve of dense muscle well-developed from all of the physical training sessions she _wasn’t_ able to get herself out of; the hard ridges of her knee where his hand stops. 

If there’s anything he despises about the Galaxy Garrison, it’s how often their commitments to it keep him from being around her like this. And soon, the Garrison would be yanking them apart for a full two years. If he didn’t think Matt would throttle him - or find some more painful punishment to span their time enclosed on a spaceship together - he might thank him for proposing that the four of them go and spend a weekend to themselves, celebrating in the desert and giving Shiro a few more days with Katie. Once they get back, Matt and Shiro’s expedition preparations begin in earnest. He doesn’t foresee having much free time up to the launch date. 

“Well if talking is out of the question,” he says, “I guess we have two options.”

Katie’s eyes drift down to his hand on her knee, then pull back up to meet his. The mirth in her expression is swept away and replaced with dark eyes and teeth pressed to her bottom lip. Her legs part a fraction. His hand shifts back up her thigh. 

“And those are?”

“We stare out the window and watch the desert go by,” he says. She lets out a laugh and motions for him to continue. “Or, well, we-”

Shiro leans in, and she follows. When he swallows, he pushes down the dread that’s been welling up from his gut all day. There were more important things to do than worry, he tells himself. Memories to be made, lips to be captured. The things he loved would be far from him soon; he shouldn’t let fear keep him from them when they were so close now. 

Katie’s lips on his still each and every thought. Chapped, they give a delicious scrape as they move against his with each long, drawn kiss. She pulls his bottom lip between hers with a gentle suck, and he responds a moment later with a brush of tongue. Her mouth is warm, and the wheaty bitterness of the beers she’d had earlier clings to her tongue and teeth. 

His fingers curl, gripping her thigh and fighting the urge to follow the hem of her shorts around in either direction. There’s a finicky and wholly unnecessary voice in his brain that reminds him that he’s in the back of his girlfriend’s father’s car, with two other people who did not sign up for a show. Shiro realizes a moment later that said voice is not, in fact, in his head at all.

“Oh come on, guys, at least save it for when we’re stopped and I can run off into the desert and puke in peace,” Matt complains. 

Shiro and Katie part, though not with the haste Shiro’s sure Matt would prefer. He looks up to find Matt turned around in his seat and scowling at them. Keith, on the other hand, has studiously fixed his stare on the road, though from the tensing and occasional rise of his shoulders, it looks like he’s holding back laughter. 

Katie sticks her tongue out at Matt. “You’re just jealous that the internet will never love you back like this,” she teases. 

“No, I just don’t want the picture of my pilot making out with my sister seared in my brain,” he says.

“Please,” Keith cuts in, voice wobbling with the chuckle he’s still fighting. “You think it’s adorable.”

“I think you’re confusing me for my parents,” Matt says with a huff. Confined to a moving vehicle as he is, Matt can’t flounce off with his usual dramatic, offended air. He crosses his arms over his chest and sticks his nose in the air instead. Shiro catches a glimpse of his smile as he looks away. 

“You’re going to have Shiro all to yourself for the next two years, Matt,” Katie says. “You’ll have plenty of time to strengthen your impenetrable bromance without my interference.”

Katie snuggles up against him and drops her head on his shoulder. One hand rests on his arm. She peers up at him, expression coy.

“Until then,” she continues, “I’m calling dibs.”

It’s the kind of look that makes him wonder how he’s going to go the next twenty minutes without feeling her mouth against his, let alone two years. 

…

“Uhhhh… Keith?”

Car headlights flash in dark windows and cast parts of the house - if it could be called that - in eerie shadow. The cabin - shack? - juts out against the desert, a brown, scraggly tooth in a moon-bathed mouth. Shiro knows the source of Matt’s hesitation: the place looks like the set of a slasher film, and the full moon and piles of nothing all around them isn’t helping.

“Welcome to your home away from home, guys,” Keith says, turning off the car. He twists and faces them, expectant.

“ _This_ is your majestic desert hideaway?” Katie asks, gesturing to the structure ahead of them. 

Keith’s nose wrinkles. “Hey, don’t knock the Estate. This place has been in my dad’s family for five generations.”

He pops the trunk and gets out the car. Matt waits until Keith’s out of retaliation range before going “Yeah, and I don’t think it’s been cleaned once since then.”

Keith lets out series of expletives that makes Matt laugh and Katie whistle, then says, “If you want, we can set you up a tent and you can sleep outside. The coyotes _probably_ won’t bother you.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Matt says, popping out of the passenger side and going to help Keith unload. “Murder shack is fine.”

There’s a yelp as Keith whacks Matt with a grocery bag of snacks. 

“Better go rescue him,” Katie mutters, “and the chips.”

They lug everything out of the car - food, drinks, suitcases, board games, and more drinks - and up to the rickety front porch. The wood creaks beneath Shiro’s feet, leaving him to wonder how much longer the planks would sustain the weight of him and the booze-and-soda laden cooler Matt had packed. Maybe if he were injured in a porch-related accident, they wouldn’t send him to space. Against his better judgement, Shiro rocks a bit on his feet. The wood holds.

Keith slings the bags he’s carrying over his shoulder and digs a key out of his pocket. It takes a few jiggles of the doorknob and a bodily push, but the door to the cabin swings open a minute later. Shiro and the others stay glued to the porch as Keith steps inside, as if waiting for the ax-wielding murderer to appear the moment Keith crosses the threshold. Instead, Keith smacks at the wall by the door until a light turns on. He looks back at them.

“Two of you are going deeper into space than mankind has ever been before,” Keith says with a sigh. “If you tell me now that you’re freaked out by an old house, I’m going to lose all hope for the future of humanity.”

Pursing his lips, Matt shuffles into the cabin and sets down his suitcase. “It’s definitely nicer in here” he says.

Katie turns to Shiro, shrugs, and follows Matt in. Shiro hauls the cooler in and sets it down next to all of the other bags, then takes a look around at the living room.

For as dilapidated as the cabin looked from the outside, it’s surprisingly cozy on the inside. It’s not luxury by any means: the stripes of the colorful Mexican blanket spread out over the couch are faded, and the coffee table is propped up on concrete blocks, but there’s something about it that’s so Keith-like that Shiro can’t help but feel comfortable. It’s understated, simple, a little cluttered, dusty, but well-loved. A single, long wooden shelf sags under the weight of sun-bleached paperbacks, and a large corkboard covers the wall where a TV might otherwise be. It’s dotted with artifacts: a few elementary school report cards, some crayon pictures that look suspiciously like they were drawn by a young Keith, and handful of photographs gone pale with time, depicting Keith at various ages. Some of the pictures feature a man who shares Keith’s jawline and the turn of his lips, a father who has been gone for years. It hits him then, what it means for Keith to offer this place to them, for him to allow them to see this slice of his life not long before Shiro and Matt leave for such a long time.

“Thank you for bringing us out here, Keith,” he says, voice warm.

Keith shrugs and doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I couldn’t get out here before to clean or anything, but it beats trying to cram us all into a dorm room at the Garrison or Matt and Katie’s house.”

The Holts have already taken to poking around, Matt wandering into the kitchen while Katie eyes a tower of electronics in the corner of the living room. She reaches out to touch a dial, then pulls her hand away. 

“This is some pretty high-tech, quality equipment, even for being, what, six, seven years old?” she says. She starts rattling off the specs, all the while holding her hands behind her back to keep herself from touching everything. When she finishes, she turns back to Keith. “What did your dad do to get his hands on all of this?”

“Nothing special,” Keith says. Shiro can tell he’s aiming for dismissive, but his tone comes off as defensive. Keith busies himself with stacking the board games on the coffee table as he continues, making sure his back is to Katie. “Dad worked for NOAA when I was little, but eventually quit and just did odd jobs around town. He always liked monitoring the weather and stuff, though, and kept all his equipment out here.”

“Huh,” Katie says, peering more closely at the electronics. “But this setup doesn’t really look like wea-”

Placing a hand on her shoulder, Shiro cuts her off and steers her away from the tech. “Why don’t we help Matt get set up in the kitchen?” he asks. “I’m getting kind of hungry.”

“Actually, I was thinking we could start a fire outside,” Keith says. He turns back towards them, and if there had been any hint on his face of Katie’s questions throwing him off, they’re gone now. “The burners take forever to heat up, and the ventilation’s not great, so we’d _all_ be cooking in here if we used it.”

“Was that a pun?” Matt calls from the kitchen. “Did Keith make a pun?”

“Besides,” Keith continues, outright ignoring Matt, “you haven’t seen stars until you’ve seen them from out here.”

Shiro bites back a sharp reminder that all he’d have to look at for ten months straight were stars, and then another ten months of them on the way back. The enthusiasm in Keith’s voice overrules the petty fears worming up in his gut. Keith had offered to share a part of him that no one else had seen before, and Shiro isn’t going to ruin that or the celebration. 

“Making food where everything is supposed to taste and smell burned, instead of it being that way on accident?” Katie says. “Sign me the fuck up.” She waltzes into the kitchen and starts instructing Matt on what to get ready.

Keith leads Shiro out to the small woodshed attached to the back of the house. Years of chopped logs had been stacked and layered. There’s a long pause before Keith unhooks a pair of work gloves from a nail on the door and slips them on. 

“Dad used to drive the full two hours out here twice a year just to put more wood in the shed,” Keith says out of the blue. He pulls the nearest logs out and piles them in Shiro’s arms. “Dunno why, we never ran out. He used to like to joke that there was wood in here older than me.”

Silent, Shiro nods. He gets the sense there’s more Keith has to say, and knows well enough to wait for it. Loading his own arms up, Keith continues. 

“This is the first time I’ve been out here in almost a year.” 

They exit the woodshed and set the wood outside the rock skeleton of an old firepit. Keith kneels and begins arranging the wood, propping logs against one another until it resembles a teepee.

“After a while, it didn’t feel right coming out, not without him. But now I have people to share it with, and I’m glad.”

Keith pulls out a firestarter and a bit of newspaper he’d shoved in his back pocket. Overwhelmed, Shiro is capable of nothing more than watching the small flame crawl over the paper, then flare up. It licks up Keith’s fingers; cursing, he shoves the flame into the center of the firewood. The fire catches. He stands and looks to Shiro. 

It’s hard to tell in the dim flicker of the building fire, but Keith’s face looks scrunched up, like he’s trying to hold back tears. Three strides and Keith is throwing his arms around him, pulling him into a hug.

“You’ll both come back, right?” There’s a wobble to Keith’s words, and he inhales sharply before continuing. “You’ll come back?”

Shiro returns Keith’s embrace, a disjointed motion as he fights the nauseous tension rising in his stomach and seeping into his chest. Keith asked the question Shiro hadn’t dared to think, but now it floods every surface of him. The uncertainty clogs his arteries; his heart skips a beat and his tongue feels numb and useless when he finally says, “Of course we will. We’ve been training for something like this for years. It’s just a scientific expedition, we’ll be fine.”

A few more frayed breaths pass before Keith can reply. “You’re right,” he says. “The Garrison’s sending their second-best pilot up, what could go wrong?”

“Hey!”

Keith pulls out of the hug with a bit of ragged laughter, but can’t escape when Shiro swings an arm back around him, yanks him back, and plants a noogie on his head. 

“Why don’t you graduate first before you try taking my title, cadet?” Shiro says with a chuckle. 

“Yeah, yeah.”

A line of light falls on them as the Holts open the back door to the cabin and join them outside. 

“This is the most touching thing I’ve seen in all my life,” Katie drawls. She schleps the heavy cooler down the stairs and sets it on one side of the fire.

“You two make us actual siblings look bad,” Matt adds on. 

They set out the food, and before too long, all four of them are roasting lukewarm hot dogs over the open flame. Shiro secures the single folding chair Keith had dug out from a closet, and Katie secures his lap. Taking the cooler as his throne, Matt becomes the official guardian of the beverages, pouring beers and soda into solo cups with the sort of gravitas reserved for formal military events. Katie erects a cooking platform out of some metal coat hangers and a few concrete blocks that look like they came from Keith’s coffee table, then almost burns the beans when she gets too preoccupied with trying to see if her phone had been able to pull any datalogs off of the SpaceX satellite from earlier. Matt challenges Shiro to shotgun a beer and beats him, but loses to Katie on his second beer. The warm buzz of alcohol and companionship almost quells the little nattering thought in the back of Shiro’s head that keeps telling him he’s going to lose this, that he won’t be able to have this for much longer. 

Katie’s kisses become freer as they drink, talk, and eat. Every few minutes she shifts in his lap to find a new patch of skin to claim with her lips: forehead, cheek, jaw, neck, collar. They’re soft, maybe a bit unassuming, the kind of casual affection that’s worked its way into his bloodstream over the months until it became a full-on addiction. He returns each kiss, on lips or shoulder, back or neck, taking in freckles and fire-glow in equal measure. His free hand runs up and down her waist and toys at the hem of her shirt when Matt isn’t watching. 

Shiro doesn’t look up at the stars, even when Keith cranes his neck up and starts pointing out constellations they can’t see from town. 

“This is nice,” Katie breathes an hour or so later. She’s gone from perched to draped across his lap, but lifts herself up to drop another kiss just under his ear. 

“Which part? When Matt almost set himself on fire with a hot dog, or the high-brow discussion on whether Iverson is an ass or a tit man?” Shiro teases.

“All of the above,” Katie shoots back, “and he’s obviously all about the booty.”

With a quick glance across the fire to Matt and Keith, Shiro slips his hand under Katie’s leg and makes a grab at her butt. She squirms at his squeeze, the blush on her cheeks colored orange in the firelight. 

“Let that be, from now until forever, the only thing he and I have in common,” Shiro says solemnly. He strokes back down her leg and cups the back of her knee. 

She smiles, and her eyes drift over to the fire. He watches her watch the small world the four of them have built together, a fleeting bubble of fire and wood and smoke rising into the night sky. Nestling against his chest, Katie takes a sip of her beer before saying, “As much as it pains me to whip out a cliché right now, I kinda wish this night would never end.”

At like that, he feels torn from his body, a distant consciousness orbiting himself, watching with tight anxiety as his mouth speaks the words, “Me too.”

He can’t shake it after that. Even as they laugh and kiss and talk, Shiro gets the sense that he’s an outside observer, a member of the audience watching a movie even when he knows it ends in tragedy. He holds tighter to Katie, the sole anchor to keep him from floating away entirely. 

It’s nearing midnight when Matt rises from the cooler and pulls out a bottle of champagne. 

“A toast?”

He splits the bottle between him, Shiro, and Katie, and ceremoniously pours a ginger ale into Keith’s soda cup. Shiro scoots the chair and Katie around so that they’re close enough to Keith and Matt. Katie raises her glass first.

“To Matt and Shiro,” she says, and Keith echoes her a moment later. Four solo cups crunch together, and they down half of their drinks.

“To Kerberos,” Keith says. Katie and Matt cheers with extra fervor. 

The words get caught in Shiro’s throat. He covers it with a long, hard chug.

…

They get the bedroom to themselves after a game of rock-paper-scissors that Shiro’s certain Katie, somehow, rigged. Keith and Matt grumble all the way to the living room, after which a scuffle over who gets couch ensues. To no one’s surprise, Keith wins, though he generously offers Matt a pillow from the couch straight to the face. 

Shiro and Katie say their shy good-nights after Matt insists they “close the bedroom door” so that he “didn’t have to hear whatever gross stuff you two get up to.” Katie shuts the door and leans against it. She tucks her hands behind her back and watches him as he unzips his duffel bag on the bed and starts pulling out sleep clothes - his and hers. 

It’s not the first time they’ve been together like this, and if he knows them, it won’t be the last. But there’s a weight to the air that’s heavier than the drinks they’ve had or their friends on the other side of the door. There’s a chance it’s just him, that the nerves simmering under his skin all night are coming to a boil, but he thinks it could be her, too. 

“Ready for bed?” he asks in a quiet voice.

“No. I’m not tired at all,” she says. A smile hovers just at the edge of her lips. “When am I ever?”

Shiro crosses the tiny bedroom in three steps. He leaves an inch of space between them: enough to feel the warmth radiating from her body, enough to watch as her eyes grow dark and her lips part. It’s not the first time they’ve been together like this, but in a heartbeat he knows that there will be no other time like this. It is the start of a slow farewell and the promise of a return, all wrapped in one. It is a plea for more time, a begging for as much as she will give for him to carry through the long passage of space. 

“Permission to wear you out?” Shiro says. 

Her voice is velvet smolder when she looks up at him and says, “Permission granted, Captain.”

Without hesitation, he cups her cheek and pulls her into a kiss. She rocks up on her toes and slides her hands to his back, embrace closing the final inch between them. They kiss like it’s their first time all night: hard and sharp and needy. His tongue flicks across her lips, and he is rewarded with the hot cavern of her mouth. He makes his thorough explorations, plunging in and out until his tongue has mapped out every inch of hers. Moaning as he pulls back, Katie rises a fraction higher on her tiptoes and catches his bottom lips between her teeth. He shudders against her as she sucks.

“I said I don’t want to hear your gross stuff!” Matt shouts from the living room. There’s a fainter “Yeah!” from Keith, followed by what sounds like a pillow being thrown at the door. 

Katie releases his lip and lets her head fall against the door. She rolls her eyes, then squeezes them shut in delight as he plants a hot, open-mouthed kiss just above her collar. 

“We shouldn’t be rude, Shiro,” she pants. “We ought to move our base of operations.”

Her hands make their way to his ass. Grabbing hard, she rolls her hips against him. With their height difference, it’s not the exact contact he knows both of them would like, but when she raises a leg and hitches it around his, he knows what to do. He takes her firmly by the waist.

“A logical plan of attack. Allow me.”

With a grunt, he lifts her up. Her arms loop around his neck. To adjust to her weight requires shifting the heat between her legs against his, and they both stifle a gasp. She rocks against him with slow circles of her hips, careful not to throw off his balance. He drops distracted kisses along her neck; the act of walking over to the bed is almost more brainpower than he’s able to muster. 

The bed makes a comfortable landing pad for them both. Katie wastes no time in pushing his tee-shirt over his broad shoulders and tossing it over to the duffel bag. Her mouth is well-versed in his chest and stomach, and the way her tongue and teeth mark his skin is sheer poetry. Eventually he has to interrupt her recitation; he hooks his thumbs around the waist of her shorts and asks a question he’s sure he’ll never get tired of asking. Katie kisses him long and slow and says yes. 

By Galaxy Garrison regulation, Shiro is permitted to pack the following with him for the trip to Kerberos:  
Two pairs of tennis shoes  
Ten pairs of shorts  
Ten work shirts  
Ten pairs of socks  
Fifteen pairs of underwear  
Two sweaters [non-wool]  
One personal effect [non-flammable, no larger than 5cm x 5 cm x 5cm].

Little does the Garrison know that Shiro will be smuggling a stowaway aboard. When he leaves, he will take with him the flush of Katie’s skin and the fan of her hair across the pillow. He commits to memory the unsteady hitch of her voice as she pants his name into his shoulder and the taste of salt and smoke on her skin. He will take the sight of her moving above him, each curve drinking in the moonlight, and fold it neatly next to his regulation socks. 

And he’ll take the soft, lazy kiss they share after, and the sleepy ‘I love yous’, and the whining laugh when he teases her about being tired now: he’ll take them all up with him. Katie nuzzles against his chest even when he groans about her being sweaty, and he decides he’ll take that too. 

He holds her until his arm starts to tingle. He shakes his arm a bit and she, half-asleep, worms over onto her other side. The room fills with the sound of her slow, steady breathing. Shiro stares up at the ceiling.

It’s too dark now that she’s no longer awake to reflect the moonlight. He hasn’t been afraid of the dark since he was a child, but the black of night isn’t the only thing that wheels in around him, vulture-like. Any exhaustion from his prior activities vanishes; this time when his heart lurches behind his ribs, it’s not nearly so pleasant. 

Shiro is sure he is overreacting, and has been all day. Things will be fine. _He_ will be fine. They will go to Kerberos as the flight plan dictates, and study ice samples according to the research guide, and then he will come _home_. Just like he’d trained for. 

For how long he fixates on the ceiling above, he’s not sure. It’s long enough for his right arm, propped beneath his head, to go sore, and then numb. Shiro sits up and stretches until he regains circulation in his fingers, then lays back down. Flips onto his stomach. Rolls onto his side. The bed squeaks beneath him.

“Katie?” he finally says.

Either he’d woken her with his tossing and turning, or she hadn’t been as asleep as he thought. She replies immediately. 

“Yeah?”

“Listen, I just…” Shiro hesitates, against his own will. It’s like the panic clawing up into his chest can’t stand to be revealed. As if to speak it would make it real.

“Shiro, what is it?” 

There’s a lilt of cautious curiosity to her tone, the kind he’s heard moments before she made a decision to test if some piece of equipment was prone to exploding. He feels the bed shift as she stirs. 

“I can’t shake this feeling I’ve got about Kerberos,” he confesses. The anxious weight, if anything, grows heavier as the words leave his lips. 

She rolls over and props herself up on her elbows. 

“What do you mean?”

He lapses into silence. Katie was first and foremost a woman of science. She had always preferred fact over intuition, which more than once drove a wedge between her and Keith when it came to decision making. He knows she loves him, knows she trust and respects him, but the knowledge doesn’t give him all that much courage to admit the foundations of his fear. 

Katie pokes his arm, prompting him.

“It’s nothing rational,” he starts, “totally unsubstantiated, but… ever since Matt and I got the news, I haven’t been able to stop feeling like something’s going to go wrong. Devastatingly wrong.”

It goes quiet again, but he can imagine the noise in her head, the zip of electricity and whirr of processing as she calculates her response.

“When they ran the last batch of simulations, what was the failure rate?”

“Four per three thousand trials, over a mean time of sixty months,” he recites. He’s looked at the numbers over and over again.

She hums and scratches at the side of her nose, thinking.

“Not bad,” she says, “but higher than we’d like. You can't expect it to get much lower than that when there are so many experimental variables, though. Still, as much as it pains me to say this, the computer models are miserably lacking when it comes to their ability to account for the skill and improvisation you, Dad, and Matt would be able to bring to a dangerous situation.”

Most of the time, Shiro prefers her analytical approach. It had been a logical salve to his worried wounds before. But her brilliance doesn't seem to work on him now. She must recognize it, and reaches out a moment later to curl her hand around his.

“Shiro, you’re the most talented and competent pilot the Galactic Garrison has,” she says. “You’re smart, and focused, and skilled, and great at what you do. If anyone’s going to blow this mission, it’s Matt-”

He shakes his head. Now that he’s uncorked his dread it overflows, spilling from his lips. He squeezes Katie’s hand back, hard.

“That’s not what's eating at me, though. It doesn’t matter how talented or smart I am if something goes wrong and I can’t fix it. And with us going all the way out there, billions of miles away, there's no Houston or rescue team or “End simulation” button.” He heaves a jagged breath and keeps going. “Look, Katie, I want you to promise me-”

A scowl runs deep across her features as she interrupts him. “Oh don’t start with that, this isn’t some cheesy movie-”

“Listen. Please. If something happens to me-”

Katie cuts him off with a loud groan. She flops onto his chest and covers her face with her arm. With a huff, he tugs her arm away and angles his head to stare down at her. Moonlight is all he has to see her by. Even in the dim, though, he can see the furrow to her brow, how intense her focus on him is despite her seeming irritation. It's another moment he'll take with him, and hold close to his heart: how much she's willing to fight his fears, how much she cares. When he speaks next, his gut curdles and clenches in pain.

“I’m serious. If something happens and I don’t come back, I want you to stay strong. Get through school, live your life, keep going without me.” His voice softens. 

Even as the words come out, he can't bear the thought. He wraps an arm around her waist. But it’s clear Katie isn’t having it: she sits up and if feels as though she towers over him. The blanket slips from around her shoulders and leaves her bare to her hips. Even in just her skin, there’s a fierceness to her. The tendons of her neck stand out as her jaw works at the words she wants to say. His attention is rooted to her. 

“Shiro,” she starts, “if you haven’t figured this out by now I guess I’ll have to spell it out: I love you, and that means that if something happens to you, I’m going to come and get you. I’ll tear apart the universe and everyone in my way to get you back, and then I’m going to kick your ass for getting yourself in trouble in the first place. And Matt’s ass too, for good measure.”

“Katie…”

She shakes her head and glares down at him.

“No, now it’s my turn to be serious. If you really, genuinely think for one second that I’d just sit back and twiddle my thumbs after finding out something had happened to you, then it’s proof that the real you was taken and replaced with a very capable but imperfect cyborg, in which case my first point still stands. I’ll get you back, and then your ass is mine.”

Her shoulders rise and drop as she catches the breath she’d ignored needing. 

There’s a heavy throb behind his ribs. Somehow it rises and escapes his throat, a shuddering sound that might be a laugh, could be a sob. He pushes himself up and she catches him in her arms, and their first kisses are damp, salt-tinged. When her lips leave his, they wander over his cheeks, down his neck, along his shoulder, and all the way back, planting tiny reassurances that sprout under the warmth of her small smile. 

“You’ll go,” she says. She presses another small kiss to his lips. “You’ll go and be great. And when you’re done being great, you’ll come back and I’ll get my turn.”

They slide back down into bed as one, his arms draped around her, her hands against his chest. 

“You’re already great,” he says. “And you sound like the Commander when you say thing like that.”

Katie rolls her eyes. “Dad will be so proud to know I actually listen to all his pep-talks.” She reaches up and combs her fingers through his hair. “Now will you stop worrying some?” she continues. “If you don’t give yourself a break, your hair’ll go white before launch day.”

Chuckling, he catches her hand by the wrist and brings it down to lay a kiss on her palm. 

“Admit it, you’ll think it’s hot when my hair turns gray,” he says with a smile.

“Yup. That’s why I keep you around: just waiting until you hit that fine, fine vintage.”

They whisper back and forth until Katie’s eyelids grow heavy. Once he thinks he’s memorized each movement of the conversation to replay once he’s well beyond Earth’s atmosphere, Shiro gives in. 

“We should go to bed, Katie,” Shiro says, watching as her eyelashes flutter against the weight of sleep.

“But we’re already… in the space… with the robots?” she murmurs. 

Even knowing that eventually she’ll roll herself onto her other side, Shiro bundles her against his chest and presses a kiss to her forehead. There’s little more he can do to shake the still-lurking woes that have plagued him all day. But he has more important things to do: his body needs to learn by heart the way hers slots with his, the rough and smooth of her skin, the wild tangle of her hair as it tickles his nose. The only way it will learn is through regular repetition. And there’s another thing he repeats, over and over again behind his eyes and in his blood, but he gives his mouth the practice too.

“I love you,” he breathes, “I love you, I love you, I love you. And I’ll come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> A follow up is in the works! Come berate me over at brettanomycroft.tumblr.com
> 
> If you like this so far, or need something to lighten the mood, check out some of my other Voltron work!
> 
> [ **Swamped**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10650033) a cryptid hunt Kidge oneshot!  
>  _“Keith, if we die here,” she says, voice low and serious, “I want you to know that there’s no one else in the world I’d want to go cryptid hunting with and that I’d been hoping we could do that kind of stuff together for the rest of our lives, Voltron or no.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“We’re not going to die, Pidge,” he snaps. “We’re both trained warriors with space weapons going up against a big monkey.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“Okay, well, yeah,” she says as she stands up, “but the adrenaline’s talking now and I don’t have a good brain-to-mouth filter under normal circumstances and monkeys and apes aren’t the same thing.”_
> 
>  
> 
> [ **For Science"**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7978024/chapters/18250978), multi-chapter Shidge for the soul
> 
>  
> 
> _“Is that the only reason you like me?” he says with a chuckle. “Because you think I’m a robot?”_
> 
>  
> 
> _She turns in his arms and pouts. “No, I like you because I think you’re a very handsome and capable robot. I have standards.”_
> 
>  
> 
> [ **Kneadful Things**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9771068), a Hance oneshot
> 
>  
> 
> _“My lab is a sacred space for scientific endeavors,” she continues, “not some kind of Makeout Point.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _Lance leans away from Hunk just enough for Pidge to get to full brunt of his eyeroll._
> 
>  
> 
> _“Since when were backrubs and necking even remotely in the same category?” Lance protests._
> 
>  
> 
> [ **For the Soul**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9072664), a Klance sickfic
> 
>  
> 
> _“Hey, Keith.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“Hey, Hunk.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“And, uh… what exactly are you doing there buddy?”_
> 
>  
> 
> _With his awkward positioning, failed soup still escaping its containment, and black hair plastered to his neck and forehead, Keith feels all the mess he must look._
> 
>  
> 
> _“My best,” he says, voice even._
> 
>  
> 
> [ **Onward to the Edge**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10724724/chapters/23764053), a multi-chapter Shidge spacetime AU
> 
>  
> 
> _Time, Coran explains over dinner one evening, is little more than a matter of perception. To try and measure it by the passage of light and dark is unreliable at best. Consider the planet Urukul and its four hundred quintants of relentless sunshine. Consider quintants, how they stretch slower than Earth-days. Consider “dinnertime” and “evening” in the black dead of space, where the Castle’s carefully calibrated computer system dims and brightens light in a facsimile of passing time._


End file.
